


like watching tea steep

by makaronik



Series: H*lding h*nds through the ages (working title) [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Body Swap, Dancing, Established Relationship, Holding Hands, Kinda, M/M, Metaphysical Intimacy, Mind Meld, Post-Bus Ride (Good Omens), Recreational Drug Use, The Night After the Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28443870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/makaronik/pseuds/makaronik
Summary: Aziraphale moved to sit next to him and it felt like they were on their bench in the park again, but also for a moment almost like they were just two ordinary humans settling into bed after a hard day, completely natural, like they’d done it every day for ages. And they had, just not recently. And never so carelessly. There were always doubts and fears in the background, of being discovered, of being punished, of losing each other. Now all of this was more or less certain, heaven and hell both knew they’d done something much worse than sharing a bed, so the only thing to do was ignore the imminent danger, and enjoy their night.or, how they figured out the body swap and had a bunch of feelings about it. Also they smoke weed but it's not like a whole thing.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: H*lding h*nds through the ages (working title) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2084580
Comments: 8
Kudos: 8





	like watching tea steep

**Author's Note:**

> I’m mixing book and show canon because i barely remember which is which, so they have annoying married couple vibes combined with forbidden love levels of yearning.
> 
> VERY minor mention of suicidal ideation, just skip the next paragraph after a girl gets a message if you want to avoid it.

“Crowley, what is that?” asked Aziraphale immediately after entering the flat.

Crowley looked at the frankly disgusting puddle like he’d forgotten it was there (he had, but in his defence, a lot had happened since he’d last seen it) before replying. 

“That... uh. well it used to be Ligur”

“You used the holy water.” 

“Yes, angel, I did. Now can we please just go? I’ll have someone clean it up tomorrow” 

“What, a human?” Aziraphale’s voice went from shocked to horrified.

“Well I can’t exactly do it myself, can I?”

“But a human wouldn’t know, they could leave some and...” He tried to look pointedly at the floor, but it read more as desperate.

“Listen, right now I honestly don’t care. Can you please just leave it?” Said Crowley, then left through a door on his right without waiting to see if Aziraphale would follow him. 

Aziraphale stood there a while longer, trying very hard not to think about Crowley touching even a drop of it and _melting_ , before he finally pulled himself together, concentrated and gathered up the puddle, the clothes and whatever was left of the bucket, every droplet on the door and walls and sent it all away. He muttered a quick curse at the doorframe in case it had gotten any holy ideas, and followed Crowley into the bedroom.

“I don’t think wine is gonna cut it today,” Crowley paused to lick the joint he’d been rolling, “though there is some in the kitchen if you want.”

He moved to sit on the windowsill, letting in the warm and heavy summer night air and lit up with a flame on the tip of his finger.

The smoke curled lazily around him as he closed his eyes and exhaled, finally letting out at least part of the stress of the past few days. Or years, probably. 

Aziraphale stood in the doorway for a moment, struck by how much he’d missed just spending time together, and how close they’d come to losing it forever. The last few years the earth had been crawling with angels and demons and a quiet and careful devotion had replaced the casual familiarity they’d shared before. It was nice to see it come back like it had never left.

“No, it’s fine. I’ll have some,” he finally answered, coming closer to take the joint, then stopping abruptly before it reached his lips. 

“This isn’t hellfire right?” He asked, paranoid after facing the reality of what holy water could do to a demon.

“It’s not,” Said Crowley, then when that didn’t seem to convince him, added “Well, it could be.”

“What do you mean it could be?” 

“Is your spit holy?” 

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“We’ve just shared a bottle of wine, should i be worried?”

“You know that’s not how it works,” said Aziraphale, _or that wine would be the least of your problems_ , he didn't add, not sure yet if they could go back to making such jokes.

“Exactly. but it could be if you wanted, right?”

“Well that's hardly the official way to make holy water but yes, I suppose it could be.”

“Well it’s the same thing with fire...” Crowley trailed off, increasingly done with this conversation. Just like Aziraphale to stop himself from doing something that’d finally stop him overthinking, by overthinking it. “Listen, if you’re not going to smoke just give it back.”

“No, no I am,” said Aziraphale, too quickly, then finally took a drag, also too quickly, he would have coughed if he was human.

He gave it back after a while and sat down on the bed. 

“Oh that is quite comfortable.” Either he didn’t remember it or Crowley had changed the mattress since he’d last been here.

“The humans at the shop compared it to a cloud,” said Crowley, with a healthy dose of irony. 

And it really was, thought Aziraphale, just less damp and cold.

He remembered heaven before the war, before angels took up suits and bureaucracy. Neither of them had ever been children, but they had been younger once and playing in the clouds singing and dancing and flying in the clouds was how all angels would spend their time, before everything had fallen apart. 

He felt the bed shift when Crowley sat on the other side and started rolling another one. 

“We don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow, might as well smoke whatever’s left.” He said in the same optimistically bleak way he always approached having to deal with their superiors. 

“You think, what? That this is our last night?”

“Might be, or it could be months before they send someone for us,” Crowley said before lighting up again, “either way angel, if you’ve got a bucket list i suggest you get on with it.” 

He sat back on the bed with his legs spread out in front of him.

Aziraphale moved to sit next to him and it felt like they were on their bench in the park again, but also for a moment almost like they were just two ordinary humans settling into bed after a hard day, completely natural, like they’d done it every day for ages. And they had, just not recently. And never so carelessly. There were always doubts and fears in the background, of being discovered, of being punished, of losing each other. Now all of this was more or less certain, heaven and hell both knew they’d done something much worse than sharing a bed, so the only thing to do was ignore the imminent danger, and enjoy their night. 

An ashtray appeared between them, crystal glass and antique by human standards but rather new by their own. He recognized it immediately from a hotel in Paris where they’d run into each other sometime in the 1920 and spent two days and two nights smoking and drinking and dancing, but mostly ignoring their last meeting.

They smoked in silence, but neither seemed to mind. They were both processing quietly what had happened and what could still happen. After a while Aziraphale was sure Crowley was about to fall asleep until he suddenly sat up and asked.

“Fancy a last meal?”

“Oh don’t say it like that, dear.”

They went out anyway. They could have ordered, but though it went unspoken, they both wanted to make sure they got to see London at night one last time.

It was still surprisingly early, maybe reality hadn’t quite recovered yet, or maybe it was Crowley stretching the night as far as it could go. It was breathtaking in the way only summer in a big city ever is, the air clean after the storm before, leaving just the smell of warm concrete, and food and life.

Everything was open in part because the world was already forgetting what had happened, and in part because fish raining from the sky and the city being encased in a ring of fire was no excuse to go home, as many minimum wage workers had heard that day. 

As they walked down the street whoever they saw suddenly found that a seemingly insurmountable problem in their life had been solved.

A young girl got a message from her parents, asking her to come home, using the correct name for the first time. 

A man walking towards a bridge, fully set on jumping off of it looked down and saw an old friend, now homeless sitting on the ground and decided he couldn’t go before helping him.

All around them happy coincidences blossomed and their effects trickled down to make the life of hundreds if not thousands of people better. Adam might have said no more messing about but honestly? This was just reparations, and in large part unintentional. A parting gift.

They went to a small Indian place with plastic chairs and the best curry nearby, where Aziraphale had to fight the urge to order almost every dish on the menu because that would mean admitting that he might never again get the chance to eat them (or anything at all) ever again and he wasn’t quite ready to board that train of thought.

Crowley helped himself to half of one dish (which was his favorite food in the last couple of decades) and ate it slowly, savoring every bite. He didn’t usually eat when stressed, his snake instinct abhorring such vulnerability when in danger. But again. Last meal and so on. Besides, he didn’t exactly feel tense anymore. They’d done what they could, the world was safe. They might not be but dwelling on it wouldn’t do them any good.

They walked by a café on their way home, and Aziraphale went in to buy some pastries that had caught his eye through the window, miraculously fresh and warm even that late at night. Crowley stayed outside and bummed a cigarette off the barista smoking in front of the door and in return the cough that had worried her for some time disappeared as she took the next drag.

Watching Aziraphale order one of everything left (and some things that hadn’t exactly been on the menu before tonight, and yet had been baked that morning, which meant that he was also doing quite a lot of meddling in time, entirely unaware, and all for a brioche) Crowley felt a surge of hope, disguised as determination. No matter what heaven and hell sent after them, no matter how hard it would be this wouldn’t be the last satan-blessed sweet treat his angel ever got to eat. He simply couldn’t allow it.

As they started making their way home (and Crowley’s mind did come to a screeching halt when he realized he’d just thought of his flat as their home) he was already formulating a plan. He was walking so fast Aziraphale had to jog to keep up at times, but that didn’t stop him babbling inane nonsense about french dough the entire way. 

When they finally got to the flat, he pushed Aziraphale towards the living room, taking a detour to grab a bottle of wine from the kitchen on the way. When he got to the living room, Aziraphale was finishing spreading out the pastries over the coffee table on an array of antiques including a tiered cake stand he vaguely remembered from Venice in the 17th century. He opened the wine and taking a glass in one hand and, fuck it! A pain au chocolat in the other stood in front of Aziraphale, getting ready to save the world. Or their world. Again. 

“The prophecy, do you still have it?” He asked.

Aziraphale put down the pastry he’d been eating and dug around his pockets before taking out the burnt scrap of paper.

“Agnes Nutter, she was smart right?” Crowley continued, after taking a swig of the wine. “Or maybe lucky. Either way, if you have the prophecy it means it was meant for you. For us. Read it again.”

“ _When alle is fayed and all is done, ye must choofe your faces wisely, for soon enouff ye will be playing with fyre._ " Aziraphale read it out without argument for once. “When all is done, that certainly seems to fit, but the rest? I hadn’t gotten to this one before.”

“I have an idea about that. Remember, you asked about hellfire? I think that’s what she means, in any other case fire wouldn’t be worth warning us about.”

“That makes sense, but what about the other part? Choose your faces wisely. I’m not sure I can decipher this without my other books, her symbolism can be nigh incomprehensible, when she’s not being painfully literal…” He trailed off, suddenly wearing the same expression he got when he’d solved a particularly challenging crossword puzzle “Or maybe she is. Being literal that is. And she means for us to choose our faces? Each other’s faces?”

“Well it would work, wouldn’t it? If they tried to hurt you with hellfire, and it was me instead, I’d be fine.” He finished his pain au chocolat in two bites, and sat down on the couch. 

“I suppose it’s worth a try,” said Aziraphale, and immediately took his hand and closed his eyes. 

Now since no humans have ever done this or even been able to imagine it there aren’t really words to describe what they did. It felt like giving Aziraphale his jacket because he was cold or rather how he imagined that would feel (because no matter how much some part of him wanted to he’d never done that, not that Aziraphale could even feel cold). It was a bit like going to sleep in someone else’s bed: warm, surrounded by their scent, private. But also very much not unlike cutting a limb off and handing it to someone to hold on to for a while.

Crowley kept his eyes closed for a while after, not necessarily praying, but certainly hoping quite vigorously it had all worked according to plan and he could finally go to sleep after this clusterfuck of a week. Then he heard his own voice, with a tone more polite than he’d ever thought possible say “Oh. This is quite strange” and his eyes opened in shock.

Then for an instant, he didn’t see it. He was so caught up in all the layers of strange feelings and thoughts that came from seeing a face that had been his for six thousand years look back at him, not in the mirror but real and three dimensional and moving independently and also somehow wearing an expression that was entirely new, and then it hit him, just as his voice (again with that unbearably soft tone) said, 

“Oh, my dear, your eyes.” 

Crowley fought back the urge to defensively blurt out some awkward version of I know ( _I have eyes, don’t i?_ his mind offered unhelpfully, but even Aziraphale wouldn’t appreciate a pun in that moment). He wasn’t sure how he could have missed it, even for a second. It seemed so obvious, so wrong to see Aziraphale’s pale eyes, so natural, so utterly human, without any trace of the occult or divine on them in the middle of his own face. It was almost worse than the one time he’d tried colored contact lenses (a failed experiment, since, as it turns out they aren’t really made for vertical pupils). Those, at least, had looked obviously, glaringly fake with their too large iris (still too small to hide his own) and pixelated gradient of inorganic colors. Aziraphale’s eyes are flesh and blood and it almost made it worse that knew them just as well as his own. It certainly got worse when he had to watch yellow slowly bleed into them from the sides until he was staring into a perfect replica of his own eyes.

“I can’t do that,” He said, and he really couldn’t. His powers just didn’t work when it came to hiding his eyes. That was the whole point of being punished he supposed, but still awfully inconvenient.

“I know.” 

“You know?”

“Of course I... Crowley, how many pairs of sunglasses did I fix for you before they started mass producing them?” And Crowley had thought he’d always been rather clever when making excuses for why he couldn’t fix them himself, but apparently not.

“I can see your wings,” he said, instead of dwelling on eyes. Not that it mattered, it’s not like Aziraphale could do the trick alone. It had to be both of them.

And the wings weren’t even the problem. Angels and demons alike would be able to not exactly smell but feel them. The body was just a vessel for the holy (or unholy in his case) being inside, and the relevant holy and unholy physical traits were shining through the disguise, the wings in an entirely nonphysical way. 

All the manic energy he’d had before was quickly turning sour. He’d really thought just for a second it would all work out and maybe it was the weed making him emotional but it had also been an emotional day and they’d been so fucking close so he just started crying, for the second time that day.

And Aziraphale was still holding his hand, which was rather comforting, but also breaking down in front of him was the opposite of comforting so the sobbing got much worse before it got better.

Aziraphale felt like he was being surprisingly calm, mostly due to being too surprised to really process what was going on. It was an unbearable reversal of their roles, Crowley who always knew how to comfort him, who always knew how to find the right words to calm him down, who always kept his own feelings neatly tucked away behind his sunglasses, being so openly broken.

“Come on Crowley, calm down please, I’ve got an idea darling,” he said, and it wasn’t exactly true but he did have the beginnings of one forming in the back of his mind.

Crowley was slowly calming down and with his free hand Aziraphale wiped away his tears. 

And then he kissed him.

That mostly shocked Crowley out of his breakdown because he’d missed it. The last few years they’d barely touched, but before that? Raising Warlock they’d practically been living together and Crowley hadn’t slept most of those six years just so he could spend his nights with Aziraphale.

The kiss was gentle and wet with tears, but it felt like a welcome home and Crowley knew he wouldn’t, couldn’t let it be a goodbye. 

After they pulled apart he wiped his hand over his face, willing the tears, snot and redness away. He was still breathing a bit shakily so he stopped doing it altogether, and said: 

“Alright. What’s your plan.” 

“I was thinking, what if we took it a bit further? The swap, that is.”

“Do you mean? No, it would never work.”

“We’ve done it before.” 

“No, it’s happened to us before, we’ve never done it on purpose, and never for that long.”

“I’m sure we could figure it out,” said Aziraphale with a smile in his voice.

“And we’ve never been apart during, how would that even work and-” Crowley realized he was starting to breathe again and when his voice broke Aziraphale took the opportunity to cut in calmly.

“Do you see any other options?”

They stared at each other in silence long enough for Crowley to realise that any plan was, in fact, better than no plan and worth trying. Still, he had his doubts:

“So what we... Our souls get magically intermingled and we just walk out into the world like that? No, into heaven and hell? Do you even remember how weird it feels?”

“I remember how good it feels.”

No, weird wasn’t the word and Crowley knew it, but good wasn’t enough either. It felt glorious, transcendental, laying together limbs and souls tangled and slowly, slowly dissolving back into their own bodies, into this plane of existence. He remembered the first time it had happened, sometime in the early middle ages. The world spinning around them, blurring them more and more at the edges until they weren’t quite sure where one ended and the other began. And actually, even if it didn’t work to save them, it wasn’t a bad way to go, and that was all he usually needed to get on board with a plan.

“Fine, let’s do it. But we need to be much higher to even try this,” he said.

When he’d mentioned smoking whatever was left earlier he was being equal parts dramatic and sarcastic, since that would be no easy feat even for two immortal beings. After he’d taken up gardening as a hobby he realized that growing his own weed would avoid him a lot of the hassle and also the unsavory types or, hell forbid, _teenagers_ usually inevitable when buying it.

After a couple of hiccups, notably his first batch, grown using his usual methods, which had produced an enormous yield with exemplary foliage and beautiful flowers, that had turned out entirely unusable because it had the effect of anxiety equivalent in intensity to being run over by a freight train (something Crowley had once experienced, and still felt it was a fair comparison), and also because the faint trembling of the plant, which had inexplicably remained after harvest, made it incredibly difficult to roll. Now his set up was one of the most efficient in the country. Placed in a room at the opposite end of the flat from his others plants, lest they should get any ideas, it included a meticulously curated, yet at a glance completely random selection of music playing at specific times of the day, homemade fertilizers, the making of which had probably much more to do with alchemy than chemistry, and a light rig that looked suspiciously (the more accurate word would be obviously, there was a disco ball,) like it had been stolen from a club some 40 years earlier.

Since the only times they’d actually managed (happened, thought Crowley) to do what they were about to try had been at the end of a long night (or several) of what was the closest they ever got to a vacation. A long mission, days in some secluded and beautiful places, or maybe in the most interesting places in society at that given point. Drinking or otherwise intoxicated and almost unbearably happy, high of each other’s presence more than the drugs, they decided the easiest way to approach the issue was to forget what they were trying to do and instead worked on other parts or the ruse, which soon proved to be just as complicated.

They started by trying to perfect their speaking, which involved quite a few unflattering comparisons that would be utterly incomprehensible to anyone who hadn’t been following pop culture for millennia before the term pop culture was even created, and after deciding they were good enough moved on to body language. 

“My dear, you’re clearly just mocking me now. I haven’t been that uptight since I was forced to wear a codpiece.” 

“Oh I don’t know, I seem to remember you walking straight as a pole whenever you wore stays,” said Crowley, snickering when reminded of that ridiculous outfit. The codpiece had been bejeweled.

“That was just good posture. Besides, out of all the things I did in the 18th century, being straight was certainly not on the list,” replied Aziraphale, mock offended, but also shaking with quiet laughter. 

“Fine, let’s see you try, angel.”

Aziraphale, to give due credit, did try, he just didn’t succeed. He’d never experimented with changing his form much, always preferring to stay within the same general outline, making minor adjustments when needed, unlike Crowley who’d done as much experimenting as inhumanly possible, so this was the first time he was dealing with limbs that long and it wasn’t going well. The serpentine slink of Crowley's hips came out looking more like a foal taking its first steps.

“How do you walk? It’s like there isn’t a single straight bone in this body, are you entirely made of joints?” he asked dejected, after several attempts to walk even a few steps without getting tangled in his own legs. Or rather, not his own, which was precicely the problem.

“Sure am trying to be,'' Crowley mumbled while lighting one, though he wasn’t quite sure which one it was. It did give him an idea though.

“Let’s dance, you need to find your sea legs.”

“Do not remind me of those watery death traps. They couldn’t have invented planes soon enough,” Aziraphale paused to take a hit, “I still blame you for that one, you know.”

“Oh please, as if Leo could have actually built a functioning flying machine.” 

“He might have, if you’d ever stopped distracting him.” 

Crowley decided to let it go, he didn’t want to bicker when they could be dancing. They hadn’t done it in almost a century, and very rarely even then. Aziraphale was too self conscious to ever do it just for fun, but every now and then they’d had to attend a ball or other event where it would be expected and Crowley got the pleasure of teaching him all the newest choreographies. 

The sound system turned on with a snap of his fingers, playing something smooth and melodic. Neither him nor the sound system itself could have told you what the song was called, since Crowley had never bothered to put any music on it, assuming (correctly, in his case) that buying the hardware would be enough. If one had bothered to look through the tracks actually programmed in, they would find such classics as “The Long One That Goes lalala”, “The Only Good One” by That Asshole, and “Not This Shit Again, I Know I Told You To Delete That”. 

“Come on angel,” he said, standing up and holding out his hand, “you’re not gonna refuse me one last dance, are you?”

Aziraphale got up with a sigh, and waited until they were face to face, holding each other, then said quietly,

“I’ll dance with you whenever you want, If we ever get the chance again.” Because this wasn’t the time for personal hangups, and no matter how ashamed he was of the way he moved, always comparing himself to the most talented humans, always saying he didn’t dance when asked, he loved doing it with Crowley. The way Crowley looked at him when they spun together, made him think it didn’t really matter whether he was graceful, if he could be loved so much anyway.

They started dancing without much structure or plan, ancient, long forgotten twirls blending with more recent routines, numbered steps and structured turns, but mostly they just clung to each other for support and comfort, slowly moving around the room, thin strands of smoke dancing along with them, stinging whenever they got in their eyes, providing a convenient cover for any tears. They were beginning to find their balance, moving more deliberately, when Crowley lifted his arm for Aziraphale to spin under, both forgetting their now flipped height difference and getting tangled, stumbling pressed together until they fell on the couch, laughing a lot, and crying a bit too, their emotions still spinning with the smoke in the air and then...

It was like watching tea steep. Swirls of one melting into the other until there wasn’t a border between them. Until they weren’t exactly the same, but not separate either, their feelings and thoughts shifting back and forth between them with each breath.

“Open your eyes darling,” thought Crowley, then he felt more than heard it said all around him, made all the stranger because Aziraphale was still speaking with his voice. 

“Tell me when,” Crowley replied, sounding like both of them.

Two pairs of golden eyes locked together, they tried not to get lost in the feeling and focus. This time they had to achieve a specific result, to hide who they were but still remain themselves enough to survive holy water and hellfire. They pushed that thought far away, because the prospect of painful death following failure never made it easier to concentrate. Crowley let go of one of Aziraphale’s hands to smooth his own over his wings, watching the feathers turn black under his touch, remembering every time he’d painted his face, smearing black kohl on pale skin with his fingers, and at the same time he saw Aziraphale whispering under his breath, and felt his own wings shiver, and image floating at the edges of his mind of Aziraphale closing a row of countless tiny buttons on the back of his dress. He focused on the feeling, safe and taken care of, and wrapped it around both of them. 

“Now, I think,” said Aziraphale, his voice sounding like Crowley’s not just in pitch now, but also intonation. 

They withdrew slowly, closing off their minds but making sure to leave enough of themselves on the other. It was uncanny, he could feel his thoughts forming in a way that wasn’t entirely his own, and when he looked into the mirror on the far wall he saw a perfect copy of Aziraphale, eyes and all. He got up to take a closer look, but as soon as his hand left Aziraphale’s, he gasped, and grabbed it again. It wasn’t painful, exactly, not touching, it just felt _wrong_. But that was something they could deal with in the morning. They’d done enough for now, they were safe. Doing this always left them exhausted, even when they didn't have to consciously control it. This time they were completely drained, and Crowley was tempted to just collapse on the couch, but he wasn’t going to spoil his first time waking up in Aziraphale’s arms in years by falling asleep on a too-small couch. 

When he got up, he didn’t have to say anything before Aziraphale followed him towards the bedroom, their thoughts still tangled. 

And soon enough they were falling asleep, dreaming of nothing but each other, and the countless dances they would still get to have.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a bit all over the place, so congrats on making it to the end. I’m not, like, in love with how this turned out, but it was the very first fic I ever started, right after the show came out and even though it's not perfect I’ve spent as much time on it as I’m willing to, and I’m still proud of finishing it at all. Since the bones of this are some of my earliest writing, but a lot of it was added recently I feel like it’s shit in some places and great in others so maybe it evens out into a decent fic idk. 
> 
> I have no idea how to tag this and its past 4 am and I just want to post this, so I'm gonna add more tags later, I'm open to suggestions. 
> 
> I'm on tumblr @transmalewife


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